Joint pain can be disruptive. The pain makes you understand the need for an immediate pain reliever to alleviate your painful symptoms. In such an instance, your healthcare provider is likely to recommend fluoroscopy to help you move beyond the pain. Radiation-based treatment allows your doctor to evaluate various parts of your boy, including joints, bones, heart, kidneys, and lungs. Dr. Jeffrey Miller asserts that fluoroscopy is the ultimate global positioning system (GPS), allowing your healthcare provider to locate the exact internal injection site to administer pain relief medication.
Who is likely to benefit from fluoroscopically-guided injections?
Your healthcare provider will not likely recommend the fluoroscopically-guided steroid injections unless he needs to access hard-to-reach treatment areas like the hip, shoulder, spine, and sacroiliac joint. The injections help address various concerns, including rotator cuff problems, disc herniation, lumbar spine arthritis, and shoulder arthritis.
The medical professional may also use fluoroscopy in specific treatments and assessments like cardiac catheterization, placement of IV catheters, barium X-rays, and lumbar puncture. Your doctor may also use the steroids injections independently in diagnostic procedures or in conjunction with other treatments. For instance, your doctor will use fluoroscopy as a complementary procedure that enables him to check blood flow in the coronary arteries, especially in cardiac catheterization. The treatment allows the medical expert to detect possible arterial blockages. On the other hand, your healthcare provider might use fluoroscopy to guide the catheter into particular locations inside your body in intravenous catheter insertion.
Other possible reasons why your doctor might recommend the guided injections include:
- Locate foreign bodies
- In minimally invasive procedures like percutaneous vertebroplasty to address specific concerns
- To guide anesthetic injections into specific joints or areas of the spine
- Pacemaker implantations
- Urological surgery
What are the possible risks you might have with fluoroscopy?
You might need to inquire from the medical professional about the amount of radiation he is likely to use during the treatment and the risks you might have during the process. The risks you are likely to have might have something to do with the cumulative X-ray examinations and treatments over an extended period. For instance:
- Expectant mothers should notify healthcare providers of their situation as the radiation might result in congenital disabilities
- You are likely to have an allergic reaction in instances that your doctor uses dye. Therefore, notify your healthcare provider of possible allergic reactions to latex, specific medications or contrast media. Additionally, patients with kidney failure or other forms of kidney issues should notify their doctors before the radiation treatment.
- Certain factors are likely to interfere with the process. For instance, a previous barium X-ray treatment might interfere with an accurate exposure of your lower back or abdominal areas.
However, medically appropriate radiation examinations used by an expert radiologist provide benefits that are likely to outweigh the risks.
Though a fluoroscopy examination might not be painful, specific preparations of the process like accessing a blood vessel for angiography might be uncomfortable. However, your healthcare provider will take possible measures, including administering local anesthesia to ensure comfort during the entire process. Talk to your doctor for more inquiries about fluoroscopy and how you are likely to benefit from the radiation treatment.
